Something Like the End

Fiction. Winner of the Fall 2017 Black River Chapbook Competition. Laced with foreboding and propulsive menace, Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier's new collection of short fiction reverberates with the clang of alarm bells. Confronted by inescapable dark in the face of a certain end or its apocalyptic aftermath, the characters in these six stories must come to terms with the lonely, inevitable questions that surround something as small and powerful as death, as big and catastrophic as the end of the world. Grim and haunting in one turn, uncanny and wildly strange in the next, SOMETHING LIKE THE END asks us to look long and hard into the darkness--and then dive in.

"Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier is as fearless as her protagonists, who face down disasters, natural and fantastical, using their wits and wisdom. These eloquent and uncanny stories give the reader no safe place to stand, but plenty of reason to dance."--Bonnie Jo Campbell

"Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier makes dread fun, and uneasy look easy, because there is no reason we can't have the most delicious language, dry wit, and downright dancing along with the impending apocalypse. How wonderfully doomed we are!"--Steve Amick

"These dazzling, unsettling stories flash through the darkness like shooting stars. Each highlights a different catastrophe looming on the horizon, and in this way, Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier infuses each story with menace and mystery--and captures the anxious spirit of our times."--Valerie Laken